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Cooking

My girlfriend's birthday was a few weeks ago. Her 21st, to be exact. This was also the first birthday I'd be present for: she didn't celebrate anything the first year I knew her, the second year was in Germany, and this is the third year we've known each other. In the spirit of the occasion, I wanted to make sure she'd be happy with the party she had.

You know gingerbread houses, of course. Smallish houses, covered in all sorts of candies and dripping in frosting. They're popular around Christmas (not that I celebrate that holiday...).

Recently, my family was getting together, and I decided to make something fancy out of gingerbread. After considering Serenity (too hard), I decided to make a castle. I threw the dough together, rolled it into 9x16 sheets, and baked it.

Helen and I drafted plans for the castle, and she figured out what shapes and sizes everything should be.

I made the corner pieces by wrapping slices of gingerbread around a 1" dowel as soon as the cookies came out of the oven. For the rest, I let the gingerbread sit overnight to stale, then sliced it into rectangles.

The castle was assembled with Royal icing, then set afloat in a sea of jello with Sweedish Sharks.